by C A Bird
Mark realized he was seeing the effects of the weapon the Secretary of Defense had told them about in the meeting with the President. It seemed a lifetime ago. “The bomb that hit Los Alamos was probably a Neutron Bomb,” he told them. “Is there any way to tell what type of radiation it’s producing?”
Darryl pulled up another screen. “Wow, it looks like almost pure neutron radiation. That’ll be a real killer. What caused that?”
Mark told them of the meeting with the President and explained the Chinese’ use of Red Mercury on their warheads.
“Oh great!” said Micah. “Does anyone know what effects this damn Red Mercury is going to have? I’d never heard of the stuff until Mr. Hargraves just mentioned it at the meeting.”
“I get the impression there hasn’t been a whole lot of testing in that area,” Mark told him.
Mark was examining the screen, trying to interpret the data he was seeing, “Where are you getting this information?”
“We have seismic sensors in the mountain and there are external sensors as well, but they haven’t been extended yet. Good thing, too. This morning’s blast would have taken them out if we’d deployed them too soon. There are other detectors that are giving us the info on the radiation. Our Cray supercomputer takes all the data and extrapolates the size and direction of the blasts. All the functions in the complex are monitored and regulated by this main computer. The server resides in a computer room on the third level next to the emergency generator room.”
A console in the center of the room gave Darryl access as he monitored the shelter’s vital signs. “How come this morning’s was so much later than the others?” Mark asked.
Darryl clicked his mouse and updated figures appeared on the monitor. “I have a theory about that. The radiation from today’s blast has a completely different signature than yesterday’s.”
“What do you mean, signature?”
“Different radiation pattern. One of yesterday’s explosions, the one that hit Roswell, gave off what we would consider normal radiation, ionizing radiation consisting of alpha, beta and gamma rays, a normal pattern of fallout, and induced radioactivity in the soil by neutrons released from the fusion process. I think it was an old-fashioned Russian hydrogen bomb. Looks like everyone’s throwing bombs at us. The other two were definitely the Chinese MIRVS coming in on one Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, but again, they are normal hydrogen blasts. The one that hit today has this Red Mercury residue, and extremely, highly penetrating gamma rays. I think it’s part of a second wave. It would appear that the retaliatory response, or second strikes, has already or are currently taking place. Wish we could contact someone out there. I’d love to know what kind of damage has been done… or if there’s anything left.
Mark asked Micah, “Is there some sort of damage control team that’s checking out the shelter for any effects from the blast?”
“Yeah,” Micah replied. “We’ve heard from the power plant, which was our main concern, the computer and generator rooms and the open caverns that house the farms. There was some minor damage from things being thrown around but there doesn’t seem to be any structural damage. Hopefully that’s the last of the bombs.”
Mark looked around the room. “There may be no one left to launch them.”
August 22, 11:35 a.m.
Later that morning Mark again wandered the hallways of the facility, this time exploring and looking for Chris. Everyone he encountered asked him questions about the shelter, naturally assuming that since he’d arrived in the helicopter with Will, he’d been here before. They didn’t realize he was no more familiar with it than they were.
He started his exploration with the top level, poking his head into various rooms that opened off the hallway beyond the auditorium. The daycare center contained a large number of small children and three women who were sitting in tiny kid’s chairs, their knees almost under their chins. One of them was crying and the other two were trying to comfort her. Mark quickly retreated, wanting to avoid serious conversations until he’d had an opportunity to sort through his own feelings. Was it only yesterday? It all still seemed so totally unreal.
The hallways were carpeted with hotel grade carpet, and the lighting, with the fixtures behind soffits along the ceiling, was subdued, emitting a soft diffused glow. Will had told him the lights were always on, controlled by the computer to increase in brightness during the day, decrease in the evening and diminish even further at night. This would help to maintain the circadian rhythm of the residents in a world without natural sunlight. According to what Will told him, the power plant, which he hadn’t seen yet, supplied enough power for a small city. They wouldn’t have to worry about conservation of electricity.
Continuing to explore this level, he passed a library and a classroom, some empty rooms, a large room with a stage at one end, and a music room. The latter contained chairs, music stands and shelves along one wall that were loaded with various musical instruments. Working his way around a large square, he rounded a corner and entered the same cafeteria where he’d met Chris the night before. There were two people at one of the tables talking in hushed tones as though the atmosphere of the shelter required it. They nodded at him as he entered.
Mark crossed the room to the glass front refrigerators that contained salads, sandwiches, an assortment of burritos and small pizzas, and rows of Cokes, Diet Pepsi’s, and fruit juices. There was a counter with two microwave ovens, a commercial coffee setup, plastic tableware, condiments and napkins. There was still no one working at the service counter or grill and everything remained spotless, looking completely unused. Breakfast had been early and he realized how hungry he was when his stomach growled at the sight of food. After selecting a turkey sandwich and a pear, and heating the sandwich in the microwave oven, he sat at one of the tables facing the door.
He’d just started to eat when a woman entered the room. She was one of the ladies he had seen in the daycare center and he thought she might be the woman he’d witnessed arriving at the parking lot yesterday. She smiled shyly at him and immediately lowered her gaze, going quickly to the refrigerator. Mark noticed a bruise on her right cheek and wondered if she’d been injured while getting to the shelter. She had allowed her dark blonde hair to fall loosely about her face, possibly in an attempt to hide the bruise. When she finished heating her food and looked for a place to sit, Mark decided he didn’t want to be alone after all.
“Hi, I’m Mark, would you care to join me?” he called out to her.
She glanced at the original table she had chosen, looking like a frightened animal ready to bolt, but then hesitantly walked over to his table. “Hi, I’m Lori Arnaud. Thank you.” She looked down at her food and immediately began to eat.
Mark was a little confused by her withdrawn demeanor but realized everyone here was in a mild state of shock. He had no idea how long it would take for people to adjust to their new situation and return to a semblance of normality.
“I think I saw you arrive yesterday,” he told her. “Were those your children?” He immediately regretted the question, realizing many of the people here had lost family and friends and polite conversation in their new environment would require a totally different set of rules.
Mark was relieved when she answered, “Yes, one of the other women is watching them while I eat. They already had breakfast in the daycare room while I was at Mr. Hargrave’s meeting. Ashley is six and Kevin is four.”
He noticed she didn’t mention a husband and being a quick learner he didn’t pry.
Hesitating, and not quite knowing what else to say, he finally came up with something he thought would be safe, ”Where . . . where did you come from, I mean, before . . . you know, before the signal?” He finished lamely.
Grinning shyly, she glanced up from her food, seeming to find his discomfiture amusing. “We’re all going to have to be careful about what we ask people, huh? It’s okay, I’m not going to freak out on you.”
He immediately relax
ed, and chuckling, replied, “You’re right, I was worried about what I could ask, not knowing what you may have been through in the last 24 hours. Well?”
“I came from Denver. My father sent me the signaling box by overnight mail, from Los Alamos. He’s a nuclear scientist at the lab there and I’m quite sure Mr. Hargraves would rather have him here than me.” She dropped her eyes again.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There are a lot of people here that didn’t get boxes directly. They came with family or friends, or even obtained boxes by methods that I’m sure Will never dreamed of. Everyone’s welcome.” She seemed so frightened that he felt a need to reassure her. “Your father must have felt you should have the box.”
“I guess so. Mr. Hargraves said he thought the explosion this morning came from the vicinity of Los Alamos. They have an old bomb shelter there from the Cold War, so I’m clinging to the hope that he’s okay. Where did you come from?”
“I live . . . or lived rather, in California, working for Will Hargraves as the manager of his aerospace company. Now,” he said, suddenly realizing it was true, “I guess I’m unemployed.” He finished his sandwich and bit into his pear.
“What did you do for a living?” he asked, already learning to speak in the past tense.
“I taught P.E. in high school, and I was the girl’s track coach.”
“Hey, you must be a runner. Do you want to jog with me? I thought it might be interesting to take a running tour of the complex. I need to go check out some things in the control tower but we could go after that. Say about 1:00?” For a moment he thought she was going to decline, but after a brief hesitation in which she looked twice at the door, she agreed to have the kids stay at the daycare center so she could join him.
“Great!” he stood to dump his trash in the container. “Meet me at the gym, okay?”
She continued to look down at her plate but nodded briefly.
August 22, 12:10 p.m.
After the ride up the elevator and a climb of about twenty stairs, Mark re-entered the control tower. He saw Micah turn up the dial on the radio. There was a break in the static and Mark waited expectantly, hoping he would hear a signal from the outside. The static suddenly screeched loudly and Micah, wincing, tweaked the dial to a lower volume.
“I thought I sent you to bed this morning. How come you’re back here already? It’s only noon.” Mark walked up behind him. Micah was so engrossed he hadn’t noticed the stairwell door opening.
“Whoa, you scared me Boss. I slept for a little while but I didn’t want to miss anything. Bob Crowder checked in but I told him to go be with his wife.”
“Picking up anything yet?”
“Naw, I have a feeling the EMP knocked everything out, but I’m hoping some equipment was insulated from it. There hasn’t been a peep from the outside but there’ve been a few breaks in the static, so I’m hoping it’ll make it easier to receive something. We’re scanning with long-wave, short-wave, medium-wave, very-high frequency, ultra-high frequency and the prayer hotline, hoping to pick up anything we can from anywhere in the world. We’re transmitting too. With no Federal Communications Commission to worry about, we’re using everything from three kilohertz to three hundred gigahertz.” He pointed out instruments to Mark as he referred to them. “I’m also trying to use satellite communications, but I can’t tell if the hydrogen blasts have damaged, disconnected or destroyed the little suckers.”
“When will you know?”
“We don’t have full capacity on the antennas yet, we only have the auxiliaries extended.” He waved his hand at some of the other instruments. “We have internal sensors on-line for the door systems, the power plant, atmosphere, etc., but we didn’t turn on the outside sensors because they’re all buried inside the mountain for their protection. Mr. Hargraves said he’d let me know when we could fire them up.” He examined a few more readouts while Mark sat down at the computer console, and started clicking on icons and exploring the directories.
Micah leaned back in his chair, his fingers entwined behind his head. “That Will Hargraves is something, huh? I guess you know him pretty well?”
“He’s been like a father to me all my life. He knew my dad and helped raise me when my folks died. I have to admit though, I thought this shelter was a waste of time. Will had tremendous foresight and saved us all. What’s that instrument over there? It looks like an oscilloscope.” He indicated a monitor with a squiggly line on it.
“It is. Signals will show up on it before we’re able to hear them.”
Mark was accustomed to being in charge, being aware of everything that went on around him, so he asked Micah to explain how each device worked. He wanted to learn all there was to know about the shelter and about the way it functioned. Being a pilot, and being involved in the manufacture of aircraft and missile systems, he was extremely knowledgeable about communication devices, and he had Micah teach him about the ones they were currently using at the shelter. They pulled down the manuals and got to work.
In addition to the communication devices there were instruments for monitoring the outside temperature, wind velocity and direction, the radiation level and barometric pressure. The sensors, inside their protective bunkers, were located at various points on the mountain. Redundant systems existed in case the bombs had destroyed some of the primaries.
Mark wondered if the nuclear war had ended yet, or if there would be delayed reactions and more bombs to come. If their presence became known, and a war was still going on, the shelter could conceivably become a target. From what he understood from Will, however, they were buried deep inside this mountain and only a direct blast from a hydrogen bomb could affect them. Although, he remembered, they were bounced around pretty good by this morning’s blast. The sensors would be at risk if they were exposed and Will had decided to keep them secure until later.
The control room was approximately thirty feet square. The left-hand wall had a sixty-inch monitor, blank until the sensors were activated. There were indicators on either side of the screen, some with meters, most with digital readouts. A few indicated the output of the power plant, the water level in the reservoir, the power levels in the auxiliary batteries, and the air pressure in the complex. There was a bank of lights showing the status of all the doors, red lights that indicated if one of the doors failed to operate or stayed open for longer than two minutes. Although that probably wouldn’t cause a problem they didn’t want to take a chance with air leakage or contamination.
The lights were all green.
This room, sixty feet above the top level of the shelter was the nerve center of the complex. The alcove ten feet below had an airlock leading to a tunnel that traveled a few hundred feet south to the outside, an escape hatch should anything happen to the shelter. Another door in the alcove opened on the continuation of the staircase dropping down over six stories to the top floor of the shelter. This staircase could be used in the event of an elevator malfunction or a serious loss of power. A solid metal door was set in another wall with the words “Weapons Locker” stenciled on it. Mark had wondered about that one and decided he would ask Will about it later.
The tower door swung open and Will came in, followed by Robert Crowder. Will waved toward the others and immediately scanned all the active readouts.
Micah inquired, “When can we open up the eyes and ears Chief?”
Will looked at his watch. “Maybe tomorrow, Micah.”
August 22, 8:30 p.m.
Mark closed his door, turned the deadbolt and looked around, only now really noticing the room for the first time. The quarters for single persons were compact and efficient, reminding him more of a cruise ship cabin than a hotel room. There were two rooms; a living room and a bedroom connected by a short hallway. A tiny bathroom, where he had showered after jogging earlier in the afternoon, was off the connecting hallway. On the opposite side of the hall from the bathroom was a counter top with a heat plate and a small microwave just large enough for a frozen dinne
r. A small coffeemaker was suspended from an overhead cupboard and the counter contained a small sink. Drawers under the counter contained a few utensils, while a cupboard above had coffee. There was an empty under-the-counter refrigerator, but no other food or drinks anywhere in the “kitchen.”
“Maybe I should have gone grocery shopping today,” he thought. He had noticed people carrying items back to their quarters from the warehouse, but had been too busy to pick up supplies of his own.
The front room had a computer monitor/T.V. screen, approximately twenty-three inches, built into an entertainment center against the right hand wall with a desk chair in front of it. A computer keyboard rested on a pullout shelf beneath the screen, which was an all-in-one computer to save space. Recessed bookshelves, on either side of the screen, were empty except for the remote. A small couch sat against the left wall facing the computer and there was an end table, a tiny coffee table, a picture of a mountain range above the sofa, and an artificial plant in the corner. The living room wall just left of the hallway entrance held a consolidated instrument panel with a digital clock that indicated the time and date, a weather station and an intercom. The clock read 8:34 p.m. and the date showed August 22 – 1, day one after the end of civilization. No weather data was displayed.
The apartment was carpeted with a light gray carpet while the walls were off-white. He went into the bedroom where he had attempted to sleep the preceding night. The twin bed against the left wall spanned the entire width of the room. Sheets and blankets were stacked at the foot of the bed and he hadn’t bothered to properly make it the night before. A recessed wall unit was built in directly ahead covered by a drape, which he brushed aside. There were several empty shelves, a set of three small drawers and a closet rod. He took his street clothes off the bed and hung them in the closet wondering what provisions there were for laundering or cleaning them. He’d checked out two pair of shorts and t-shirts this morning but hadn’t taken the time to get any other supplies.